Slavery in India and Pakistan

The return of democracy in Pakistan last year has once again put feudal politicians firmly in charge of the nation's affairs. Both major parties, the PPP and the PML, are heavily dominated by the country's biggest landowners, who are reliability voted into power by their poor landless peasants making up the majority of the electorate in Pakistan.

British writer William Dalrymple has accurately described the politics in Pakistan as follows: "There is a fundamental flaw in Pakistan's political system. Democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning remains almost the only social base from which politicians can emerge. In general, the educated middle class - which in India seized control in 1947, emasculating the power of its landowners - is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. As a result, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan the local feudal zamindar can expect his people to vote for his chosen candidate. Such loyalty can be enforced. Many of the biggest zamindars have private prisons and most have private armies."

The Pakistani landlord's "private prisons" came in sharp focus recently with the news of 170 peasants being held against their will by Sindhi landowners, in violation of the court orders.

Responding to questions about the situation during US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's recent visit, Luis CdeBaca, President Obama's ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, told Time magazine, "we are exploring ways we can help Pakistan to confront the scourge of captive workers, to deliver freedom for these workers and realize the promise of Pakistan's 1992 emancipation law."


In his recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff argued that the feudal systems remains the biggest obstacle to reform in Pakistan. Addressing those who have not been to Pakistan, Kristoff explains that they "should know that in remote areas you periodically run into vast estates — comparable to medieval Europe — in which the landowner runs the town, perhaps operates a private prison in which enemies are placed, and sometimes pretty much enslaves local people through debt bondage, generation after generation. This feudal elite has migrated into politics, where it exerts huge influence. And just as the heartlessness of feudal and capitalist barons in the 19th century created space for Communists, so in Pakistan this same lack of compassion for ordinary people seems to create space for Islamic extremists. There are other answers, of course, such as education, civil society, and the lawyers’ movement. But I wonder if land reform wouldn’t be a big help."

There have been rare instances when media attention and public pressure have compelled the government to free haaris from private prisons. In April this year, a private TV channel GeoTV reported that police freed 14 people including 8 children and 4 women from the private prison of a landlord in Faiz Muhammad Brohi Goth in Gadap Town near Karachi.

Though Pakistan has been in the news lately for its continuing practice of slavery, it is not alone. Bonded labor in South Asia is considered the problem in modern slavery affecting millions of people. The UN believes 20 million people are enslaved worldwide, the majority of whom are in South Asia, according to a BBC report.

A recent report by US State Department for 2009 said that “India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.”

India is listed with 52 countries on the watch list of nations that have failed to meet the minimum standards against human trafficking but are making efforts to do so. The blacklisted countries are subject to US sanctions if they don’t make greater efforts to fight trafficking.

The Philippines, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan have recently been added to the U.S. “watch list” because of what the report calls a worsening trafficking record in those countries.

“This is modern slavery. A crime that spans the globe, providing ruthless employers with endless supply of people to abuse for financial gain,” Secretary Clinton said as she released the report.

For the first time, India, China, Russia, Sri Lanka and Egypt and other countries that have been on the on Tier 2 watch list for two years, face the prospect of being automatically moved to the Tier 3 blacklist next year without a presidential waiver if they fail improve their trafficking record, the State Department said.

A 2004 study by the International Labor Office (ILO) estimated that there are up to a million haari families in Sindh alone, the majority living in conditions of debt bondage, which the U.N. defines as modern-day slavery. Last fall, Pakistan's Daily Times newspaper quoted the labor minister of neighboring Punjab province as saying that landlords hold millions of forced laborers in "private prisons" across the country.

Amidst all the cries for democracy, independent judiciary, human rights and social justice in Pakistan, nothing has fundamentally changed during the last year under "democracy", except the worsening economy, much longer power outages and a growing sense of insecurity. Regardless of the party labels and promises, the feudal power continues to endure in the name of democracy. The choices remain narrow for Pakistanis: Choose between the military and the feudal class. There is no third choice as long as the middle class remains small and unable and unwilling to exert strong influence to bring about much-needed reforms. The only hope for real democracy and necessary social, political and economic reforms lies in continued robust growth of the middle class over an extended period of time of another decade or two. There are no guarantees that the current feudal rulers will permit that.

Here is a video about global slavery:



Related Links:

India Not Combating Slavery

Bonded Labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan

Feudalism in Pakistan

Is Democracy Right For Pakistan?

Slavery in Pakistan

US State Department Report on Human Trafficking 2009

Feudal Power Dominates Pakistani Democracy

Comments

Meenakshi Iyer said…
The piece is well researched and quite an eye opener, but I slightly disagree when you talk of return of democracy in Pakistan. It is nothing but a farce. I somehow feel that Pakistan was lot better under Musharraf's military regime than under "so called" democratic Zardari. What do you say...Was Pakistan better under military rulers?

I completely agree with you that slavery is just not restricted to Pakistan. From South Asia it stretches up till Africa. I would have wanted to know more about these Pakistani landlord's "private prisons"
Riaz Haq said…
#PMLN Senator Sardar Yaqoob Nasr: "Poor are born to serve the rich... God made people rich or poor" http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pakistan-politician-comment-poor-serve-rich/1/749331.html … via @indiatoday

WHO SAID WHAT
"The poor of this country will never get to decide their own fate," Haidar said.
To this, Nasar remarked that if everyone were to become wealthy, there would be no one to grow wheat or to work as labourers.
"This is a system created by God and He has made some people rich and others poor and we should not interfere in this system," he said.
Haider countered that socio-economic classes were man-made and God had nothing to do with it.
Another Senator, Mohammad Usman Khan Kakar, too said that God created all people as equal and that the poor were not meant to serve the rich.
But Nasar could not be convinced and said: "Once in China all people were considered equal, which did not work out well.
"Those who cannot get an education and cannot earn more have no right to live the life of a bureaucrat," he said.
Riaz Haq said…
#Modi government advised to ‘discredit’ #slavery research that shows half of the world's slaves are in #India. #BJP

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/05/indian-government-advised-to-discredit-slavery-research

Prime minister Narendra Modi pressured to condemn Australian report on modern slavery over fears it could tarnish India’s image

The government of India has been advised to launch a campaign to “discredit” research into the country’s modern slavery problem because it has the “potential to substantially harm India’s image and exports”, according to an Indian news report.

The Walk Free Foundation, an anti-slavery organisation established by Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest, was specifically singled out in a memo reportedly prepared by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), an Indian security agency, and obtained by the Indian Express.

It was produced days after the release of a report last month by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Forrest’s Walk Free Foundation that estimated the global population of modern slaves at 40.3m in 2016.

India was not specifically mentioned but successive research has estimated the number of modern slaves in the country to be between 14m and 18m people –the most in the world.

Modern slavery refers to people involved in forced labour, people trafficking, debt bondage, child labour and a range of other exploitative practices affecting vulnerable populations.

According to the Indian Express, the Indian security agency wrote to the prime minister’s office and other high-level government departments advising them to “discredit” the September report and to pressure the ILO to disassociate itself from Walk Free.

The foundation was established by Forrest, one of Australia’s richest men, in 2012. It produces an annual estimate of the number of slaves worldwide, lobbies governments to strengthen and enforce labour laws, and invests in frontline social programs.

The intelligence memo claimed that researchers were increasingly “targeting” India as a modern slavery hub, according to the news report.

It said estimates such as those produced by the ILO and Forrest’s foundation had “potential to substantially harm India’s image and exports and impact its efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 8.7” – a target for eradicating forced and child labour, and human trafficking.

The security agency also said the scale of India’s modern slave population was based on “questionable statistics”, citing the fact the ILO-Walk Free survey interviewed 17,000 people in India but only 2,000 in countries such as Russia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the report said.
Riaz Haq said…
Flooding has devastated Pakistan – and Britain’s imperial legacy has made it worse
Shozab Raza


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/31/flooding-pakistan-britains-imperial-legacy

Take the story of Bashir Dasti, a tenant farmer I met a few years ago while doing fieldwork in south Punjab. Two weeks ago, his mud house was destroyed by flooding, as was the land he rented, the cotton he cultivated and the cattle he had spent years rearing. Many other farmers and agricultural labourers I got to know in Rajanpur, now a centre of the flooding, have also lost their homes and livelihoods. The Pakistan government has tasked local officials – patwaris – with adminstering relief for flood victims, yet when Bashir approached one, they tried to extort him: he was told that he would only be added to the list if he paid 10,000 Pakistani rupees (roughly £40). Bashir earns a meagre income from farming and pays exorbitant rent to his landlord, an aristocrat from a Baloch tribe called Leghari. He couldn’t pay that kind of money.

Back in the 19th century, the British Raj built alliances with local elites in order to secure its rule. In Rajanpur, Bashir’s district, this was particularly important – many tribal chiefs, including the Legharis, were armed and hostile. So in exchange for their loyalty, the Raj turned representative chiefs into unrepresentative aristocrats, granting them magisterial powers, a paramilitary apparatus and immense landed estates (jagirs) on newly irrigated land. The relationship set off a mutually beneficial pillaging of the region, whereby the British Raj and the now-landed aristocrats siphoned off rents, land revenues, and export cash cops like indigo, opium and cotton, all at the expense of previously pastoral tribesmen now forced to settle and toil as local farmers. Combined with expanding canal irrigation, tribesmen’s coerced settlement and exploitation – the British viewed seasonally migrating tribes as a security threat – left them further exposed to floods.

Because of this imperial patronage, as well as rising rents due to growing competition for tenancies with the decline of pastoral livelihoods, inequalities between landlords and peasants rose dramatically over the 19th and 20th centuries. While peasants lived in mud houses vulnerable to flooding – archives report several “great floods” affecting the south Punjab region – their chief landlords built lavish, well-fortified housing compounds on immense estates. By the 1920s, the highest-ranking Leghari aristocrat owned about 114,000 acres of land.
Riaz Haq said…
Young girls being sold in #India to repay #debt, says #humanrights body. #Indians living in many rural areas in India often have to borrow money from fellow villagers when a family member falls seriously ill and needs medical treatment. #poverty #slavery https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/28/young-girls-sold-india-repay-loans-human-rights?CMP=share_btn_tw

Young girls in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan are being sold as “repayment” for loans their parents cannot afford, the national body that protects human rights has said.

The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the state government demanding a police inquiry and answers within a month to what it called an “abominable” practice.

People living in many rural areas in India often have to borrow money from fellow villagers when a family member falls seriously ill and needs medical treatment.

Local media reports say that in half a dozen districts around Bhilwara, if a family cannot repay a loan, the aggrieved creditor has complained to the “caste panchayats” or caste councils.

By way of “settlement”, the councils have ordered the family to hand over their daughter – sometimes more than one depending on the size of the loan – so that the creditor can sell her to a trafficker to recoup his money.

In its notice, the commission said that if the family refuses to sell their daughter, “their mothers are subjected to rape on the diktats of caste panchayats for the settlement of disputes”.

Among the cases highlighted by the commission is that of a man who borrowed 1.5m rupees (£15,800) from a neighbour who was forced by the panchayat to sell his sister and 12-year-old daughter to settle the debt.

In another, a man who borrowed 600,000 rupees (£6,300) when his wife fell ill and needed hospital treatment was unable to repay it. The panchayat compelled him to hand over his young daughter to the creditor, who later sold her to a trafficker in Agra. From there, “she was sold three times and became pregnant four times”, the commission said.

The commission has sent an official to Rajasthan to investigate the cases. The Bhilwara district collector, Ashish Modi, said the crimes were the first of their kind. “They are total illegal. The police are investigating and we will make sure the victims get justice and the guilty are punished,” Modi said.

Panchayats are often a profoundly regressive force in rural India, acting as kangaroo courts. They have ordered so-called honour killings of couples who have defied tradition by marrying into a different caste or faith or ordered brutal punishments for couples suspected of adultery.

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